Owner of 8K bitcoin lost in landfill threatens to bankrupt local council

[Rikafip]

I thought something new actually happened since this thread reappeared but in the end it was just another shitposter necroing the old topic while adding absolutely nothing new and instead reporting that post, people jumped on it. Smh...

[AakZaki]

What drives him is not logic nor reason but rather his insanity and regret. I don't understand how it would be the local council's fault if he trashed his hard drive knowingly. If he were to be granted rights to dive into the landfill and possibly get the hard drive, what are the chances that it's not severely damaged by corrosion and other elements? It's been years, and even the strongest metal, when exposed to the chemicals, moisture, and other such things in the landfill, will corrode or possibly even disintegrate. It's time to give up that 8k bitcoins. This dude is just moved by false hopes.

It seems he has gone crazy because he lost 8k Bitcoins due to his own mistake, becomes very regretful and is even willing to take any action to find the hard disk. It's been years and can the hard disk still be saved if it is in a pile of other rubbish? He lives with a lifetime of regret and becomes very crazy when he can't get it back.

[OgNasty]

What drives him is not logic nor reason but rather his insanity and regret. I don't understand how it would be the local council's fault if he trashed his hard drive knowingly. If he were to be granted rights to dive into the landfill and possibly get the hard drive, what are the chances that it's not severely damaged by corrosion and other elements? It's been years, and even the strongest metal, when exposed to the chemicals, moisture, and other such things in the landfill, will corrode or possibly even disintegrate. It's time to give up that 8k bitcoins. This dude is just moved by false hopes.

It seems he has gone crazy because he lost 8k Bitcoins due to his own mistake, becomes very regretful and is even willing to take any action to find the hard disk. It's been years and can the hard disk still be saved if it is in a pile of other rubbish? He lives with a lifetime of regret and becomes very crazy when he can't get it back.

It truly is a story of someone ruining their life by not being able to let go. Instead of moving on with his life he’s going to spend his entire life chasing what could have been. A shame that having all the Bitcoin became a curse to him. If he had just poured all his resources into getting more BTC instead of chasing what he lost he probably would have ended up pretty well off.

[Assface16678]

What drives him is not logic nor reason but rather his insanity and regret. I don't understand how it would be the local council's fault if he trashed his hard drive knowingly. If he were to be granted rights to dive into the landfill and possibly get the hard drive, what are the chances that it's not severely damaged by corrosion and other elements? It's been years, and even the strongest metal, when exposed to the chemicals, moisture, and other such things in the landfill, will corrode or possibly even disintegrate. It's time to give up that 8k bitcoins. This dude is just moved by false hopes.

It seems he has gone crazy because he lost 8k Bitcoins due to his own mistake, becomes very regretful and is even willing to take any action to find the hard disk. It's been years and can the hard disk still be saved if it is in a pile of other rubbish? He lives with a lifetime of regret and becomes very crazy when he can't get it back.

It truly is a story of someone ruining their life by not being able to let go. Instead of moving on with his life he’s going to spend his entire life chasing what could have been. A shame that having all the Bitcoin became a curse to him. If he had just poured all his resources into getting more BTC instead of chasing what he lost he probably would have ended up pretty well off.

But we can't blame him. Imagine a large amount of bitcoin is gone. Added to how much bitcoin value is, you will certainly have that regret in your entire life, and it will keep on bagging you even though you don't want to. But still, it's his fault because if he just tortures anything he has, it could never happen. But what he is doing now is like a desperate move wherein he was ready to dedicate his entire life in order to find that hard drive containing his bitcoins, but do you think it will still be feasible? I think not. I'm sure that hard drive is already crushed a long time ago, so how can he find it? But yeah, maybe the thought has gone through his head, and he still has the hope that he will find it one day. You are right; instead of wasting his time, he should start all over again. If that bitcoin is not destined for him, then so be it. Will that person narrow his life because of that mistake?

[AakZaki]

It truly is a story of someone ruining their life by not being able to let go. Instead of moving on with his life he’s going to spend his entire life chasing what could have been. A shame that having all the Bitcoin became a curse to him. If he had just poured all his resources into getting more BTC instead of chasing what he lost he probably would have ended up pretty well off.

The man had a dead end and couldn't think clearly anymore because he lost 8K bitcoins from his mining. Even though it was still 2013 and he could get more bitcoins easily because the price was still under $1000. Just try if he just focused on mining again and looking for more Bitcoins, then losing 8k Bitcoins wouldn't be a dark tragedy in his life. This is because he can't move on and can't think forward and only focuses on a search that hasn't found a common ground until now. But if we were in that man's position, of course stress would hit us and we don't know what we would do.

[NotATether]

But we can't blame him. Imagine a large amount of bitcoin is gone. Added to how much bitcoin value is, you will certainly have that regret in your entire life, and it will keep on bagging you even though you don't want to.

Actually, we can. People have lost more than that amount to hacks, scams, and extortions. But they never tried to bankrupt government departments over it. They started over from scratch. This is the kind of thing you have to leave behind and move on.

[cryptocoupons]

Threatening legal action against the local council might not be a productive approach, as the responsibility for safeguarding one's assets ultimately lies with the owner. It's a tough lesson, but hopefully, it encourages others to take extra precautions when managing their cryptocurrency holdings.

[larry_vw_1955]

I thought something new actually happened since this thread reappeared

what did you EXPECT to happen? them to say "sure james, come on in and look for your hard drive." of course not. if you're looking for that kind of update then maybe you should be on a different forum, a make believe one.

but in the end it was just another shitposter necroing the old topic while adding absolutely nothing new and instead reporting that post, people jumped on it. Smh...

here's another update:

Council respond to dad who binned £275m Bitcoin hard drive in landfill
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/no-chance-dad-who-binned-32114384

a very recent one!

[nutildah]

here's another update:

Council respond to dad who binned £275m Bitcoin hard drive in landfill
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/no-chance-dad-who-binned-32114384

a very recent one!

My favorite part of the article:

An excavation, the father says, would take nine to twelve months and would be aided by specially employed AI technology. The engineer says he has studied aerial photographs of the site and believes the hard drive is in a 200-metre squared area and could be 15-metres deep.

I guess the "AI technology" helps determine what a hard drive might possibly look like in a field of debris? Aside from that, this is 3,000 cubic meters of waste they need to sort through in order to find it. A total waste of time, IMO. The worst outcome (which is also one of the most likely) would be doing all that work and then not finding it. Dude needs to be more like Laszlo the Pizza Guy & let it go.

[arhipova]

https://protos.com/owner-of-8k-bitcoin-lost-in-landfill-threatens-to-bankrupt-local-council/

I think him lashing out at the city council and threatening to sue them doesn't make bitcoin look good. wherever his hard drive is, if it's in that trash dump i don't see how even a data recovery expert could get anything off of it. it's probably been crushed, cracked, corroded, etc. lost cause. his big mistake was throwing it away in the first place but that was his fault no one elses. he lost those bitcoin a long time ago. and they're not coming back. 

I have a hard drive which is about 4 years old. It has stopped working and I even tried to follow internet tutorials and visited customer support offline channel also. But they all told me that it is impossible to recover the data now. And here, this guy is trying for 17 year old hard drive in a much more pathetic condition. I guess common sense is not so common anymore.

[Cricktor]

I have a hard drive which is about 4 years old. It has stopped working and I even tried to follow internet tutorials and visited customer support offline channel also. But they all told me that it is impossible to recover the data now. And here, this guy is trying for 17 year old hard drive in a much more pathetic condition. I guess common sense is not so common anymore.

If your drive has an electronics or mechanical issue and stops working because of it, what do you expect from "internet tutorials"? Which offline customer support did you visit? Your local computer hardware dealer? Serious and sophisticated data recovery from storage media likely isn't their field of expertise. It's easier to dismiss than tackle a challenging problem.

Who is "they all"? (Never mind, it's more of a rhetorical question.)

Professional data recovery services with years of experience, e.g. like Ontrack, CBL Data Recovery, SalvageData, ..., are usually able to recover data even from dead drives. The really big ones have large stocks of spare parts for all kinds of old and current harddrives. If you really need the data and are willing to pay for it, those companies even disassemble the platter stacks and scrape data from your individual platters with specialized equipment. But this will cost you a few grands...

I'm no expert in this field and I have also doubts that data recovery from a drive that has been exposed to nature's elements for years has any chance of success due to corrosion and moisture doing their nasty work of destruction.

[larry_vw_1955]

Professional data recovery services with years of experience, e.g. like Ontrack, CBL Data Recovery, SalvageData, ..., are usually able to recover data even from dead drives. The really big ones have large stocks of spare parts for all kinds of old and current harddrives. If you really need the data and are willing to pay for it, those companies even disassemble the platter stacks and scrape data from your individual platters with specialized equipment. But this will cost you a few grands...

there is also the trust issue. they're going to know you have a bitcoin wallet on the hard drive so if they recover that data, they might get your private keys and cash out. and you can't prove anything. just circumstantial evidence. never heard of a hdd recovery service scamming the private keys but it could happen. 

I'm no expert in this field and I have also doubts that data recovery from a drive that has been exposed to nature's elements for years has any chance of success due to corrosion and moisture doing their nasty work of destruction.

with so much money and risk at stake to do a project like that, you would think they would do a test run where they bury a hard drive in some waste underground and check on it every year to see if the data is still readable. but i guess they forgot to do that and jumped to the conclusiion.

[dunfida]

https://protos.com/owner-of-8k-bitcoin-lost-in-landfill-threatens-to-bankrupt-local-council/

I think him lashing out at the city council and threatening to sue them doesn't make bitcoin look good. wherever his hard drive is, if it's in that trash dump i don't see how even a data recovery expert could get anything off of it. it's probably been crushed, cracked, corroded, etc. lost cause. his big mistake was throwing it away in the first place but that was his fault no one elses. he lost those bitcoin a long time ago. and they're not coming back. 

I have a hard drive which is about 4 years old. It has stopped working and I even tried to follow internet tutorials and visited customer support offline channel also. But they all told me that it is impossible to recover the data now. And here, this guy is trying for 17 year old hard drive in a much more pathetic condition. I guess common sense is not so common anymore.

Thats what multi-million amount would be able to make you on which you would really be making yourself that too dumb and cant think off well or already making yourself that delusional that
you could really be able to find that hard drive on which is true that it is really that something delicate electronics. Come to think that even dropping it on your desk could already be enough on
potentially breaking that thing. How much more on trying to find for a decade+ kind of lost hdd? Better move on because if you do make yourself that thinking up always
on being that imaginary rich person then sooner or later you would really be finding yourself on a mental hospital. 

[AndrewWeb]

2013 he says: "I had 7500 bitcoins on a hard drive that I'd thrown away"....."there's a specific file on that hard drive called a wallet file which the Bitcoin is stored in and without that file there is no way of getting the money back because there is no central server that records a log of it"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tMXLDVpPs8

It's not 7500 but 8000 bitcoins. They are not stored in a file on the hard drive and the log of it is on the Blockchain.

What he really needs is the private key to this address 198aMn6ZYAczwrE5NvNTUMyJ5qkfy4g3Hi

Balance: 450,000,000.00 USD

[franky1]

old news, nothing new, someone necro-bumped this topic from ages ago

but for clarity..
the guy that lost his keys, has no legal bases to win. so nothing will come of it..

why? well lets explain:
when disposing of trash the guy lost rights to the property.
now it sits in landfill, meaning its now on the land owners property, in their possession..  meaning now the hard drive is property of the land owner(council)

the council has trespass policy set up which protects them from just allowing any unauthorised people onto the property.
he has no bases to be allowed on the landfill site

the guy knows this. he knows he wont get his trash(keys) back.. so last year wanted to get rich from suing, not from getting the keys..
but he would have lost the case too, which even before/without court proceeding is a 2nd financial loss of paying his own legal costs for a unwinnable venture in court and other costs over years of his pursuits
...and if it went to court it will cost him legal costs of having to pay the councils legal costs due to losing.. so that would have been a third loss.. should it have gone to court

regret is a big thing. but he should have spent the last 10 years doing all he could to find other ways to get rich

EG
when he lost his hard drive and he seen the price hit the 2nd ATH in 2013.. his regret then was he didnt have the 8k coin to sell at the 2013 peak
(8k*$1.2k=$9.6m(£7.6m)) he regretted not being a £7.6m millionaire

however instead of then funding £##k in land surveyors, IT/AI experts and legal advice and such to try getting the keys. he could have invested £58k* to buy 170btc in 2014's market correction (after his realisation of his mistake) which would get him to £7.6m today($9.6m) which would have brought him back to his regret win lose price

*yep buying 170k in 2014 would have been ~$400 each = $68k(£58k), which is probably cheaper than what he has spent on surveys and legal costs back then

..
but lets say he did take them to court in regards to the 'sue for hundreds of million to bankrupt council'
any good lawyer would subtly take notes when questioning him about his regret moments.
where he would admit his regret was due to noticing the second ATH (2013 of $1.2k(£946)) on the news and then selling obviously after the ATH
so lets call it back down to $400/btc by the time he put coins into a CEX after the ATH

which the council lawyers would then use as evidence that his plan and unrealised profit/claim of loss would have been only £2.6m($3.2m) not the hundreds of millions, not the $9m/$7m peak... because council lawyers would then recite his regret that he couldnt sell just after the 2013ATH price(his realisation moment) so that would have been the cut-off level of any settlement.. but he would have still lost the case and not get a settlement..
they would not need/have to offer, or propose paying £2.6m.. but any valid claim(which he hasnt got) would have been capped at under <£3m by the guys own admissions
so the council would not be worrying about going bankrupt

EDIT: responding to below

...

You said nothing with your giant mess. Please never post again.

you waste your time on a puzzle you cant solve. trying to find a key you cant find...(your post history)
hmm sounds familiar to this story

i would have snidely said go play with the puzzle.. but honestly.. dont waste another breath on it, learn from your mistakes
 have a nice day.

[larry_vw_1955]

the guy that lost his keys, has no legal bases to win. so nothing will come of it..

in the united states, if you turn in damaged currency then they will replace it with usable currency as long as you didn't get it in a bank robbery (they'll know if you did since it would have red stains all over it). so if he could somehow bring a damaged hard drive to the court and sue the city council for ruining the data on that drive they might find in his favor. stranger things have happened.

why? well lets explain:
when disposing of trash the guy lost rights to the property.

that's easy to say but harder to accept when hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake. no one is going to accept that answer if they're $100,000,000 lighter because of it.

now it sits in landfill, meaning its now on the land owners property, in their possession..  meaning now the hard drive is property of the land owner(council)

you have to imagine that the landfill is secretly trying to get that hard drive.  maybe the reason they don't want him coming there and digging is because they already dug it up. and then when he realizes it, then he really does have a claim against them. for theft not of his hard drive but his bitcoin. unless he knows every single bitcoin address then maybe they already moved some of those coins to their own addresses. 

[franky1]

the guy that lost his keys, has no legal bases to win. so nothing will come of it..

in the united states, if you turn in damaged currency then they will replace it with usable currency as long as you didn't get it in a bank robbery (they'll know if you did since it would have red stains all over it). so if he could somehow bring a damaged hard drive to the court and sue the city council for ruining the data on that drive they might find in his favor. stranger things have happened.

its got nothing to do with turning in currency to a bank to swap tainted bank notes for fresh crisp bank notes

its the FACT/law that by putting it in a trash bin and putting it at a roadside you are renouncing your ownership of the contents, by presenting it as available to be collected by a trash company/service
(as oppose to littering(just throwing it on the ground))

as soon as the trash truck arrives and puts that trash into the truck.. your ownership claim is gone
(as oppose to littering(just throwing it on the ground)where council will try to find owner and fine them for littering)

as soon as the trash truck arrives at someone someone elses land and puts it on the land.. its not your x2. it becomes the land owners property/problem
you have no claim on your trash no matter what it is. once in land fill

yep they even have laws about trash/litter, so the council cant lose, but the guy already has

now it sits in landfill, meaning its now on the land owners property, in their possession..  meaning now the hard drive is property of the land owner(council)

you have to imagine that the landfill is secretly trying to get that hard drive.  maybe the reason they don't want him coming there and digging is because they already dug it up. and then when he realises it, then he really does have a claim against them. for theft not of his hard drive but his bitcoin. unless he knows every single bitcoin address then maybe they already moved some of those coins to their own addresses.  

the addresses are known and funds have not moved in a decade. so the workers at the landfill obviously didnt remember the area of the landfill the truck unloaded that day as yes the workers probably would have had a rummage in that area hoping to get jackpot to share between themselves

[AndrewWeb]

the addresses are known and funds have not moved in a decade. so the workers at the landfill obviously didnt remember the area of the landfill the truck unloaded that day as yes the workers probably would have had a rummage in that area hoping to get jackpot to share between themselves

At 6:24 https://youtu.be/cZr97E5PgzQ?t=382

[Cricktor]

you have to imagine that the landfill is secretly trying to get that hard drive.  maybe the reason they don't want him coming there and digging is because they already dug it up. and then when he realizes it, then he really does have a claim against them. for theft not of his hard drive but his bitcoin. unless he knows every single bitcoin address then maybe they already moved some of those coins to their own addresses. 

What franky1 said, that you cease ownership once you throw your stuff into trash, sounds plausible but may depend on local legislation or affected town's trash regulation. I'd say this isn't necessarily regulated in every country or town as franky1 painted.

But seriously the landfill operators very likely don't care at all because at the time of disposal and trash collection and dumping to the landfill the coins weren't worth the amount they are worth today or since Bitcoin jumped over five figures for $$$. This is pointless speculation.

You know, that reckless guy could've had a strong wallet locking passphrase, infeasible to break via brute-force or even sophisticated dictionary and human passwords cracking heuristics. Then what?

In some countries or towns trash is even partly separated for metals or other more or less valuable stuff before it's dumped or burned. What if the harddrive never made it into the landfill. The trash guys couldn't care less.

Brace for more speculation... 

[franky1]

in uk, its once the trash truck picks it up from street
in US, its once you put trash out onto the street curb
in EU, same as UK

side note for those 'urban foragers'/'dumpster divers'
if the trash is within the property lines (back forecourt/delivery area of mall/supermarket) its not unowned. it still remains the property owners property. unless the trash is put out into the publicly accessible area outside of someones property line

..
in short the guy that lost his hard drive lost all ownership claims LEGALLY as soon as the trash truck drove down the road with the hard drive in it